Nation-Building >> In a Good Mood? Don't Read This. | return to front page

Then, after peppering Dean with jabs, Lieberman rears back to throw the knockout punch: If Dean were elected president and carried out his promised trade policies, "The Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression." Later, to drive the point home, the Lieberman campaign circulates a press release entitled, "HOWARD DEAN'S PROTECTIONIST TRADE POLICY WOULD DEVASTATE AMERICA'S ECONOMY."

Dean counters by insisting that trade agreements need mere "international standards," not American standards, on labor and the environment. But that's not what he told the Washington Post (as the Lieberman campaign helpfully points out in its release) on Aug. 25. More important from my perspective, it's the exact opposite of what Dean told me when I rode with him in July on his campaign van in Iowa. When I asked Dean if he meant just general "standards" or "American standards," he insisted that he would demand that other countries adopt the exact same labor, environmental, health, and safety standards as the United States. But the audience wasn't riding with me, and they rally to Dean in his time of need, applauding wildly. Lieberman is left to lamely reply, "That's a reassuring change of position."

Dean makes another shocking flip flop in the debate. After repeatedly saying on previous occasions that the United States can't abandon its obligations in Iraq, he now implies that he wants to withdraw American troops from the region: "We need more troops. They're going to be foreign troops, not more American troops, as they should have been in the first place. Ours need to come home."

All the candidates support an increase in the number of foreign troops in Iraq, but Dean appears to have veered into Dennis Kucinich territory, something he had scrupulously avoided before. If Dean keeps this up, after flip flops on trade, Social Security, and foreign policy, he risks losing a considerable element of his Carter-esqe "I will never to lie to you" appeal. Dean was already having trouble reconciling his promise that he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA and other trade agreements with his insistence that the United States must trade with other countries in order to turn them into sedate, bourgeois societies. Fair on not, self-styled straight-talking candidates are held to a higher standard of honesty, and Dean's having trouble meeting it.